Two Visitors
by Fantasy Cat
Summary: Walter is out of St. Claire's but another has gone in. And everyday there will be two visitors. One comes during the day. The other at night. Angsty, depressing what-if. P/O I guess.


**_I know that there's an episode coming up that will probably contradict all of this but I dont care. I've been dying to write something all week and this idea finally popped up. This might depress people though. And I guess it's Peter/Olivia. I suck at writing romance btw. Oh well._**

**_Disclaimer: Characters arent mine. Reviews are love._**

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Nothing good came out of the name St. Claire. In history, she was a saint who claimed to be able to hear and see through walls in order to never miss a single mass.

But to Peter the name would always be associated with the place he would become all too familiar with.

"Mr. Bishop." The cool but stern voice of Dr. Sumner greeted him at the entrance to the asylum. "I see you came alone this time. I would've thought that you and Walter were attached to the hip."

"Cut that crap," Peter snarled. "I'm not letting my father come anywhere near this place…or you again, unless he really wants to." Peter clearly kept his grudge against the "good" doctor for the way he treated Walter on his last visit here.

"I suppose you are here to see her then?"

"Yeah," Peter said, refusing to look the doctor in the eye.

"Right this way then." The doctor was awfully tolerant with Peter this time since he would be visiting a much harmless patient or maybe it was because the Bureau was keeping a sharper eye on him and his treatment of the new patient.

Either way, Peter had to resist every urge in his body not to argue about the circumstances that would lead him back to this place more often.

"I think you know the drill," Dr. Sumner said.

Peter walked into the cafeteria and there she was sitting all alone, unusually calm. She didn't even look up to see him walk in. She only turned her eyes in his direction for one quick second and then looked away.

Peter took a seat across from her at the table.

"Liv?"

He should have known better than to think that he would get a response…a greeting…or even a smile from her.

"Are you doing okay?" It was a terrible question to ask when the answer was obvious, but he didn't know what to say after everything that happened in the past week.

"Okay, you don't need to answer that. I get it. I get how you're feeling."

"You shouldn't have come here," she said.

"You don't want to see me here, is that it?" he asked.

Olivia looked away closing her eyes trying to shut off every inch of emotion, but she knew that was her greatest failure. She looked back in Peter's direction with curiosity and fear of one thing that was on her mind with his presence here.

"Let me see it."

Peter unbuttoned his shirt, he looked up at Olivia and said "it's nothing to worry about, Liv. If it was that horrible, I wouldn't have been able to come and see you."

Finally Olivia got the courage to see the damage on his chest: deep holes where bullets once nested in a sea of black and purple.

She couldn't bear to see how close they were to his heart though.

Peter closed his shirt. "See, it's nothing."

"Not to you," she said. "But it's something to me."

Peter buttoned up his shirt and had his hand smooth the area of the wound, not even wincing, if only to prove a point to her. "It doesn't hurt."

"Don't lie, Peter."

"Okay, maybe it only bruises a bit. But it's nothing Liv, really." He gave her a smile, which was only meant to make Olivia feel a little bit better but instead she only had a dreadful look of heartbreak all over her face.

"How can you do this?" she said trying to look everywhere except at him, keeping the tears from falling from her face.

"Do what?"

"How can you come here and even look me in the eye…how can you even smile at me…when I'm the one who put those bullets in you!"

"Liv…" Peter sighed and then leaned in closer hoping to get her full attention. "We know it wasn't really you, okay? So it was you, but you weren't acting like yourself. You had a weak moment. You had a lot of them. I couldn't possibly blame you for trying to kill me given everything you've been going through."

"But Peter, you almost died, …and here I am now…because I didn't listen to you. You tried to warn me about the tank…you tried to warn me about your father..."

"There was no way I could have stopped you from going into the tank, Liv. You did it for good intentions."

At that moment, her mind screamed_ FUCK GOOD INTENTIONS_. At least she had enough self-control to know that an actual outburst like that would have prolonged her sentence here.

Even though Peter's shirt was buttoned again, the wounds were still fresh in her mind as was the moment she caused them.

...

All because she had thought for a moment that Peter was John Scott.

...

The anger of his betrayal still fresh in her mind, it nearly became instinct for her to pull out her gun at the man she thought she could love. So when that one night came, the night she saw John standing there, pulling a gun at her, Olivia's instinct kicked in sooner than she thought.

She pulled the trigger with every desire to finally kill this man and in the process, kill the cause of her misery.

Bullets were fired endlessly until someone fell bleeding with wounds.

But it wasn't John…it was Peter. A tragic victim of wrong place and wrong time.

The fact that this incident took place in the lab at 3am when she was deprived of sleep wouldn't have mattered. John consumed her mind more and more than she wanted him to. She wanted him gone because she wanted to prevent something like this from happening.

Now the higher-ups at the Bureau wanted to charge her for attempted murder. She did choose to go for the gun upon seeing the man walk in and greeting her. She did intend to kill someone...a desire she hadn't felt since she fired her first gun at her stepfather all those years ago. But she would have to live with the fact that the one she nearly killed was the last person she ever wanted to see get hurt.

Broyles fought as hard as he could but for now, they would have to cope with Olivia pleading insanity. He was still at the moment looking to get her out of there as soon as possible or else the entire special assignment would have to be shut down for good.

All of this was what lead her to take Walter's place here…at Saint Claire's. Now that she was on the other side, she could now fully sympathize with Walter's 17-year struggle for sanity within these walls.

...

"My father…," said Peter. "Feels a lot worse about this than you could. He thinks that you were taking his place here or something because he suggested the tank. And I have to admit, as much as I want to put him at fault for this, I can't. He's been as miserable as you've been. I don't blame either of you."

Peter cautiously reached his hand across to table to find Olivia's. Her hand felt cold to the touch. He hated to think how colder she was feeling on the inside.

"We're getting close, Liv. Probably a few more days or so, there's going to be another hearing, and Broyles is going to set up a better case for you. I know it won't be easy to wait, but you know how it's been. Too many bad eggs in the Bureau and suddenly a sneeze throws you in the slammer."

"I think I'm going to lose my job," said Olivia.

"No, no, you're not," Peter assured her. "They'll probably let you go, send you to a quack for a few weeks and then after that, it's back to working on solving gruesome deaths again, your favorite kind of work."

He could've sworn at that moment that he got the faint glimpse of a smile that he would have killed for, but Peter wasn't going to push her to feel anything now. He would give her all the time in the world to recover, if only to get her out of this hellhole sooner.

Peter flinched when he heard the door behind him. Visiting time was over. "Same time tomorrow, I guess?" asked Peter.

"Do you really need to come every day?" asked Olivia, not understanding why he would bother.

"Yeah…," he said much to her surprise. "I think I do."

Finally she did it. She gave him that smile. It was weak but clearly visible and with a nod, she gave a silent understanding that she was going to see him again here same time and same place tomorrow.

After he left, the nurse took Olivia back to the women's quarters of the asylum.

...

Normally, these patients would've been outcasts in the outside world, but here they were all quite content almost at home with their unusual behaviors. In the women's quarters, Olivia felt like an outcast, as she was the most calm and least active patient. She was able to impress the nurses with her friendly and sane demeanor that made them wonder why she was even here to begin with. She could only hope that her good behavior would allow her more favor with Dr. Sumner and more proof that she was fit for the outside world again.

That afternoon she remembered trying the butterscotch pudding that Walter hated so much. It wasn't that bad. The only sour taste she endured was having to take her daily anti-psychotics.

If only the doctors knew…if only any of them knew…that the medications were not helping. What the tank did to her seemed near irreversible.

Because even though she took the proper amount of dosage that Dr. Sumner prescribed her without fail, John would come back. He always came back.

She had no clock in her room to see what time it was but he always seemed to come at the right time…usually an hour after lights out.

Olivia lied in her bed wanting to sleep through his visit this time around. She closed her eyes immediately hoping to fall asleep. The hope of getting out of here in another week was what would convince her to fight this.

"Liv."

She heard nothing.

"Liv."

It was the wind. The nurses in the halls. The creaking of the floor.

"Wake up, Liv."

He wasn't going to stop calling her. Her eyes stayed closed as put her hands to her ears drowning out all noise.

But still the sound of her name came clear through anyway. She opened her eyes against her own mind's will.

John was sitting there on the other side of the bed...as he did every night.

And as much as Olivia wanted to scream at him, throw things at him, tell him to go away, she was afraid to…or maybe she was too sane to actually do it.

He would say things to her, but she refused to talk to him. But whenever he spoke it always came out clear.

She would never look at him either. It was the only way of fighting the fact that the dead man still existed in some form.

He wasn't going to stop doing this. The medication would fail her every night. But what was the point in telling anyone here? The only ones who would understand were Walter and Peter. Neither of them could help her as long as she was still stuck here within this asylum.

And she certainly didn't want to give Walter reason to feel more remorse than he already was for the fact she was here in this room…curled up in her bed, crying away John's presence at her bedside.

At least through crying, she knew that John would eventually disappear and sleep would take over but there was no comfort in knowing that tomorrow, the nightly visits would happen all over again.


End file.
